It’s not like they are handing the mega pop star a 13th Grammy Award. Or providing her a key to the city.
But LA Metro is giving Taylor Swift and her devoted followers, aka Swifties, a message backed up with some extra rolling stock and new late-night schedules: Take mass transit, don’t drive, to Swift’s six concerts at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Aug. 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9.
While the 70,000-seat football/entertainment venue is not what you’d call transit-connected, at least not until Inglewood completes a people mover/connector, the transit agency is extending a hand as part of a strategy to woo riders onto trains and buses, potentially as many as 420,000 Taylor Swift concert-goers.
The Metro enhancements include:
• Train lines A, B, D, E, C and K will run until 2 a.m. to accommodate Swifties after the concerts. Normally, trains stop running around midnight. The last trains on the rail network will depart downtown Los Angeles at the 7th/Metro Center station at 2 a.m. on concert nights. Also, trains will operate a 15-minute intervals, shorter than the usual off-peak 20 minutes.
• Two free shuttles will be added, taking passengers directly to SoFi from a train station. One will run from the K (Crenshaw) Line’s Downtown Inglewood Station. The other runs from the C Line’s Hawthorne/Lennox Station in the middle of the 105 Freeway. The shuttles will run 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. before each show, and for 90 minutes after the concerts end they will return to thd train stations.
• Trains will have longer train cars on each line in an effort to handle the anticipated higher use, Metro reported. The enhancements are intended to help concert-goers make connections to the A Line (Azusa to Long Beach), B Line (to North Hollywood), D Line (to Wilshire/Western), and E Line (to Santa Monica or East Los Angeles).
Metro points the way, using old and brand new train lines and late-night operations, mixed with the special shuttles:
• To take the train…
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